


Into The Fire

by HawthorneWhisperer



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Superheroes, Vigilantism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-25
Updated: 2016-03-25
Packaged: 2018-05-28 22:25:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6348055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HawthorneWhisperer/pseuds/HawthorneWhisperer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clarke is a vigilante, facing a ghost from her past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Into The Fire

**Author's Note:**

> Very loosely inspired by Marvel's Daredevil, with violence at approximately that level. Bellamy and Clarke beat each other up, but in a superhero context, not a domestic violence one. Still, if that bothers you, this is not the fic for you.

“I never wanted this for you,” Clarke said sadly.  Thunder rumbled, ever closer, and she looked at Bellamy across the rooftop and wondered how they’d ended up like this.  It wasn’t supposed to be this way— not for him.  She was supposed to have kept him safe, not— not created a monster she couldn’t recognize.

“That wasn’t your call to make,” he growled, and tightened his grip on his gun.  His  _ gun. _   She found no trace of softness in his eyes, none of the boy she’d left behind.

Clarke had thought she was protecting him the day she left, thought she was saving him from ending up like her.  But now he was something else entirely, driven by rage and consumed with a desire for revenge.  It wasn’t that she’d never thought he would be capable of this, because she’d seen the darkness in him, a darkness that reflected her own.  But she thought he would be able to fight it like she hadn’t been able to fight hers, because he had always been stronger than her.

Clarke was a goddamn mess the day she met the Blakes, training in a run-down gym and sleeping in her car, a wreck of grief and anger after losing so many she loved.  First it was her father, killed by the Mountain Men because her mother refused to back down on her anti organized crime bill.  Then it was Wells, killed by a thirteen year old girl as retaliation for his father’s crackdown on gang activity.  Then Finn, caught in the crossfire of a war between rival biker gangs.  She vowed that no one else would ever lose someone to those people, but vigilantes had to sleep during the day and a young woman sleeping in her car brought more notice at two in the afternoon than two at night.  Octavia was the one who found her and convinced her to live with them, shoving her own bed into a corner and loaning Clarke $30 to buy a rundown futon to sleep on.

Bellamy had resisted her presence at first, distrustful of someone with so much money in her past choosing to live like she did, but somehow they shifted from roommates who yelled at each other to friends who patched each other up.  Bellamy didn’t buy her lies about her bruises, perhaps knowing Lincoln too well to believe that he’d accidentally hit her so hard it split her lip, but he kept his silence for her.  He helped her find a job at Miller’s coffee shop so she could pay rent and for two months-- two beautiful, perfect months-- Clarke had a family.  Octavia sparred with her, Monty and Jasper made her smile during her early morning shifts, and Bellamy was there on the days she would drag herself back to the Blakes’ apartment, bone weary and exhausted but too sad to sleep.  He would sit with her in their cramped, dingy kitchen and make her a cup of coffee while she talked about Wells or Finn or her father or why she wasn’t taking her mother’s calls even though she’d long ago forgiven her for Jake’s death.

How long he knew what she was doing with her nights, she never knew.  But that last night— the last time she had something like a family— he walked into the room she technically shared with Octavia and kissed her goodbye.  “Be safe,” he whispered, and then kissed her again.  There was no urgency to the kiss, just a soft promise from them both.

A promise she had to break because that night she got caught.  It was supposed to be a simple sabotage job, just stealing the Mountain Men’s chemicals and damaging enough of their equipment that they wouldn’t be able to manufacture anymore meth for months, and maybe collect some intel on who ordered the hit on her father.  But instead she was dragged, bleeding and unmasked, before Cage Wallace.  Maya had looked startled when Emerson brought Clarke in through the back door of the Mount Weather Club, and Clarke wondered how much Jasper’s girlfriend knew about what the Wallaces did behind closed doors.  Did Maya know about the drugs?  The money laundering?  The murders Cage ordered?  She was only a hostess, but she was smart and had to know that things weren’t as they seemed.

But Clarke never got to find out if Maya was innocent, because when Clarke disarmed Emerson and stole his gun, all hell broke loose.  Clarke had stumbled into the middle of a gang war, and her shots served as a signal for twenty undercover Grounders to start shooting.

When the carnage was all over, Maya was dead along with fifteen Grounders, almost all of the Mountain Men, and thirty other innocent civilians; men women and children who committed no crime but going to the wrong place for a steak dinner.  Clarke herself had killed Cage and Dante Wallace, and she never found out if any of her bullets had taken out some of the civilians, but she counted them among her kills all the same. The Mountain was broken, but Emerson had seen her face and escaped so Clarke had no choice— she ran.

She never went back to the apartment she shared with Bellamy and Octavia, although sometimes when she was on her nightly patrol she would crouch on the roof across the street and watch them.  Bellamy looked out of Octavia’s bedroom window before closing it every night for two months, like he was waiting for her.

And then he moved on.

Clarke was happy for him; she really was.  Gina worked at the bar Bellamy liked to stop at after his evening classes, and she was everything Clarke wasn’t— happy, kind, and soft where Clarke was steel-edged resolve.  Clarke followed Gina for three days to make sure she had no connections that would put the Blakes in danger, but aside from some Grounders liking to visit her bar, she was clear. Once Clarke was satisfied, she took their building out of her nightly route.

Bellamy deserved happiness, and he would never get that with her.  It was better this way.

He moved on and so did she, finding herself more and more drawn to the Grounders new commander against her better judgment.  Lexa ran her gang with an iron fist but soft eyes, and Clarke knew she was more than just a petty warlord.  She was trying to turn them into something more than just dealers and enforcers; forging an alliance across all the gangs and trying to turn the Grounders into what they used to be— men and women who protected their own when the police couldn’t or wouldn’t.

But then Lincoln ran afoul of the Grounders just by refusing to let them conduct their business in his gym.  They had let him leave years ago on the condition that he not interfere with their business, and his stand drew unwanted eyes.  He was marked for death and Lexa wouldn’t budge, so Clarke called in a favor.

Her stepdad was not pleased to see her, and even less pleased when she refused to agree to see her mother.  But Kane promised to put Lincoln in Witness Protection, and Clarke thought she’d solved their problems.

She had no way of knowing Octavia would broker her own deal with Kane, and she never thought O would fake her own death to join Lincoln, but she did it all before Clarke could step in.  Clarke had no choice but to watch Bellamy stand in front of an empty grave, Gina to his right and Miller to his left.  Clarke wanted to tell him the truth, but once Bellamy knew his sister was alive he would stop at nothing to see her, and that would put them all in danger.  So instead she watched from the branches of a tree half a block away, and even at that distance his sadness threatened to break her.

Clarke threw herself into her work with Lexa, broaching ceasefires with the other gangs in the city and trying to find a way for Kane to regain his position as Police Commissioner.  Kane understood Lexa’s vision.  He knew that the police couldn’t protect everyone, and he was willing to turn a blind eye to the Grounders if they stopped the violence.  But Pike was a zealot, bent on arresting or executing every Grounder within city limits.

Just weeks after Clarke watched Bellamy attend his sister’s funeral, Emerson bombed Gina’s bar as retaliation for the Mount Weather massacre and Lexa’s lieutenant slit her throat for daring to believe in peace.  Clarke had woken to find Lexa’s life leaking out all over their bed, and had held her as she died because she listened to Clarke.

And now Bellamy stood across from her, drenched in Grounder blood and looking for more.

“They weren’t responsible for it,” Clarke pleaded, readjusting her nightstick in her hand.  “Those men you killed— they didn’t kill Gina.”

Bellamy lowered his rifle but the rage in his eyes burned even brighter.  “You’re defending them?  Clarke, you’ve spent every goddamn night  _ fighting  _ people  like them.”

“They were changing,” she pleaded.  “Lexa— she was working with Kane.  Working on something bigger.  Something better than this.”  The men and women he’d killed were no heroes, but they didn’t deserve to die.  They were only doing what they knew, and Bellamy killed them because of the patch on their jackets and nothing more.

“Kane,” Bellamy spat.  “You know he claims Octavia and Lincoln died in a car crash?  We both know it was a set up, and we  _ both  _ know who was responsible.”

“Lexa had nothing to do with that,” Clarke said, her voice cracking.  Lexa was dead and Bellamy was lost, and all she’d ever wanted was to keep them safe.  She had so much blood on her hands and all she wanted to do was turn back the clock.  Back to when Lexa was alive and Bellamy sat at his kitchen table at night, grading while Gina read a book on his couch and Octavia slept in Lincoln’s arms four blocks away.  Or maybe to even earlier, when Clarke had never met Lexa and she was the one on Bellamy’s couch, passing the time in companionable silence.  But that life was gone and wasn’t coming back.

Thunder rumbled again and the skies opened, cold rain pouring down on them both.  She wished it could have been cleansing, but it just chilled her to the bone.  “Just leave,” Bellamy said, and she could hear the anger vibrating through him.  “Leave and let me do this.  We both know you’re good at walking away.”

That blow hit her harder than any physical one could. “I can’t let you kill anyone else,” she said, resolute.

He blinked the water out of his eyes.  “They killed Gina.  They killed Lincoln.  They killed  _ Octavia _ ,” he raged.  “And you want to protect them.”  Below, Clarke heard the Grounders’ engines roaring as their motorcycles approached the warehouse.

“I’m trying to help,” Clarke said, but when Bellamy turned his back on her and raised the rifle to his shoulder, he gave her no choice.

She hit his shoulder first, driving her fist into his back to throw off his aim.  He spun and tried to hit her with the butt of his rifle but she dodged and he threw the gun to the side, metal clattering against concrete while lightning cracked above them.  They were evenly matched, just like when they’d fight at Lincoln’s gym, but this was no friendly sparring match.  There would be no affectionate half hugs after, no beers in a kitchen with peeling paint and stained linoleum while they iced their injuries.

Bellamy kept hitting her right side and she wondered if he remembered the day she had to get stitches there, wondered if he was using her past against her, but she swept her leg under his left knee and he went down like a sack of bricks, because she knew he’d blown that knee in college and she was no better than him when it came to fighting dirty.

Bellamy was back on his feet before she could press the advantage and managed to knock her nightstick away, landing a hard right hook on her jaw just seconds later.  Stars exploded across her field of vision and blood filled her mouth, but the pain in his eyes hurt more than anything.  “I don’t want to fight you,” Bellamy shouted as she took a step back, and she believed him.

“Then stop,” she panted, raising her fists in front of her face.  “Stop killing the Grounders, and I’ll go.”  She had to protect them— they were Lexa’s people and maybe they weren’t good, but Lexa had died believing they could be better so Clarke would believe in them for her.

Bellamy shook his head, sad and resigned, and charged her again.  He kept coming until she was trapped between him and the edge, bruised and bleeding just like him, but not giving up.  “I don’t want to hurt you,” he said, and her vision was wavering but she could see the tears in his eyes.  “Please, just let me do this.”

“I can’t let you kill them,” she repeated doggedly, throwing a wild punch that he dodged easily.  

Clarke fell, off-balance from her swing, and Bellamy stood over her, his jaw working.  “They killed Octavia.”  He picked his gun up from the ground and retook his stance, aiming at the men below.

“She’s alive,” Clarke gasped.  Her ribs hurt— probably broken. She’d been sworn to silence, but this was for the greater good. This was for his soul.  “Octavia’s alive.”

Every muscle in Bellamy’s body froze.  “What?”

“Octavia and Lincoln— they’re alive.  Witness Protection.  Kane got them out.  I didn’t know she’d— it was just supposed to be Lincoln, not her too.  I didn’t know until it was too late.”

Bellamy turned to look at her, curled pitifully on her side in the pouring rain.  “Gina?” he asked, and the hope in his voice cut right through her.  

Clarke shook her head.  “Not Gina, I’m sorry.  But that wasn’t Grounders— it was supposed to look like Azgeda to splinter the Coalition, but it wasn’t.  It was Emerson.  The Mountain.  He’s— he’s responsible.  Not Lexa’s men.  Not those people down below.”

“They’ve killed before, though.  Haven’t they?”  he pressed.  Clarke had to nod.  Violence was the Grounder way, after all.  “And now that she’s dead, they will again, won’t they?”

“You don’t have to be murderer, Bellamy,” Clarke pleaded.

“Too late for that.”

“So walk away.  Tonight.  Just don’t kill them.  Not like this, not for something they didn’t do.”

“Octavia’s alive?”

“She’s alive.  I don’t know where she is, but she’s alive.  I swear.”  

Bellamy gave her an indecipherable look and slung his rifle across his shoulder.  “Tonight, they live.  For you.  But we’re not done.  And when you’re ready to stop protecting scum like that— you know where to find me.”  He walked across the rooftop to the stairs and disappeared, leaving Clarke alone with the rain and her wounds.

**Author's Note:**

> Blame rumaan for the ending. I wrote it, but she told me to go through with it.


End file.
